Adam Rapp Quotes

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

I won't read novels while writing novels.

I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.

If I'm writing a novel, I'll probably get up in the morning, do email, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies, and then be off novel-writing around 1.00pm and stop around 6.00pm. And I'll be writing in longhand, a safe distance from my computer. If I'm not writing a novel, there is no schedule, and scripts and introductions and whatnot can find themselves being written at any time and on anything.

I try to write in the morning when I'm working on a novel. You get up, you have breakfast, you read the paper, you make a couple of phone calls, and then you sit on the couch and start. I use felt pen and white notepaper.

During the day, if I don't have any other commitments, I'm usually at my desk writing, revising, or researching anywhere from four to six hours.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

I don't read books regularly, because I'm always writing them. I've written 30 books, thousands of pages.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.'

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

People offer me loads of stuff, and some of it I like, but I just can't do it because I can't write it all. So I might get in the position where I have some sort of company and just write maybe the first episode, but these are love projects, in a way.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I write constantly about everything.

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived, around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7, and I'll write until 11, then take an hour off, then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.

I am always trying to write.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.